EFFICIENT UNIT LOADS - ECR Community

In the short-term, tertiary unit load design will involve
a number of trade-offs, such as:
7.4. Trade-offs
• Maintaining a space efficient load, requiring
minimum handling throughout the supply chain
versus investment to remove capacity constraints
• Space utilisation versus handling costs around a
constraint, e.g. around a height constraint at the
entry to the distribution centre – until this point
transport can maximise use of the cube at the
constraint, handling costs are incurred to lower
heights accordingly
• The efficient use of retail display space, with small,
frequent deliveries, versus the penalty associated
with poor vehicle fill
• Investment in new EUL and transport infrastructure
versus investment in new scheduling systems to
maximise the time dimension of capacity utilisation.
Both should take place
• Maximum tertiary load height or fill versus
secondary count
• Cost of own tertiary fleets, especially non-captive
versus use of a tertiary pool
• Tertiary strength and design versus strength of
primary and secondary contents
• Load heights versus cost of providing suitable
equipment to ensure safe, ergonomic picking
• Tertiary item cost versus security and protection of
contents
• Penalties of dealing with a mixture of tertiary item
types versus the investment required to standardise
on one type, e.g. pallets
• Creating one tertiary load for all supply chains and
players, with low complexity, but some penalties,
versus a variety of tertiary loads to optimise
different supply chains and/or parts of supply
chains, with cost of complexity, but lower penalties.
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7.5. Other Guidelines
Load stability
Load stability is essential to prevent disintegration
during handling, storage and shipment. This minimises
product damage and avoids possible danger to
personnel. Minimum material should be used for
stabilisation and it should be as “ecological” as
possible. The stabilisation material should also be easy
to remove without damaging the product. Both
columnar and interlocked stacking of secondary items
are acceptable, although the Euro pallet only
accommodates columnar stacking, whereas the
Industry pallet allows interlocked stacking of 600x400
secondary items.
Effective administration systems and reverse
logistics
It is essential to develop an effective administration
system for tertiary items, similar to that described for
RTI in Chapter 6. An efficient and effective return
logistics system is also mandatory. Existing pallet pools,
and recommendations on RTI return logistics in
Chapter 6, both provide examples of best practice.
Exchange pallet systems can create problems,
especially in automatic pallet handling systems, if the
pallet exchanged is of a lower quality than the pallet
issued. No pan-European standards exist covering
pallets in use, but key criteria are damage levels,
cleanliness, possible contamination from previous loads
and moisture content (which affects pallet load
protection and pallet item weight).
The Efficient Unit Loads Report